Most people don’t realize that when they’re buying food at the airport that it’s not the restaurant brand’s employees usually that are serving them. It’s generally a concession management company like OTG or Delaware North they’re dealing with.

Delaware North doesn’t just operate at airports, they manage national parks, and recently lost a major government contract. It turns out though that they claim to own the trademark to Yosemite National Park and argue that continuing to call it that violates their rights. The government isn’t renaming the park, but they’ve renamed much of what’s inside it, while Delaware North seeks $3.5 million. And here I just didn’t like Delaware North because I’ve always found customer service to be poor — either a function of employee selection or corporate culture.

More From View from the Wing

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

Comments

Thanks Gary for the link to extra 25 Hertz points. Points posted instantly, but it looks like Hertz changed their policy in 4Q15 to only extend expiration dates for points for qualified rentals now. Still an easy 25 Hertz points.

Delaware North wants $51m for the IP. They paid for the IP when they won the contract a long time ago. The new contractor was required to purchase the IP from the old contractor, just as Delaware North was when they won the contract.

$3.5m is the value NPS places on the IP. If they wanted 3.5m, it would be a done deal. But instead they want $51m and they had to rename everything inside the park, but the NPS is refusing to rename the park itself.

How did we get here? Who knows, but it’s a ridiculous position that the NPS put us in IMO, but I don’t know how this ever started that the concessionaires would have the rights to the property names and other IP that should belong to the public. The payment for the contract should have included the right to use the NPS’ IP, not ownership of the IP and anything created inside the park should revert to the NPS at the end of the contract. But somehow the NPS did it differently?

Delaware North owns IP for a lot of other National Parks where they were or are the contractor.

No vendor or subcontract vendor should own the trademarks to a US name. Why should DN be able to trademark the Lincoln Memorial because they pick up the trash there under a contract? The property and the rights of the name are owned by the citizens of the United States who have never been compensated in any way for the those names.

DN had the rights to use them while they had the contract. Once they lost the contract they lose the rights. While they had these rights they were able to be the sole company to use them in marketing of the hotel, on napkins, on trinkets etc etc

What they paid the former contact owner was for all the “assets” that included the Curry trinkets, the hotel napkins, etc etc . Not ownership of the name. The Website reservation system was also part of that which DN purchased and just sold off to Aramark

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.

Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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